How do you all plan to fund your US LLM's?

Unless I get a pretty BIG scholarship, I won't be going - anyone else in the same boat?

Two generous scholarships from Finnish foundations (Fulbright and another of approximately same amount). Because of the taxes I hope Yale, too, would give me something.

tmalmine, what do you mean by "because of the taxes". Do we have to pay US taxes for our scholarships??

DoubleLM, obviously you didn't study basic tax law for your first degree..

I believe tmalmine is referring to Finnish taxes. Scandinavian countries typically impose heavy taxation on all sorts of economic transactions.

My "libertarian" heart feels sad about it :-)

Indeed tax law is the least I'm interested in. But we should be able to set off our LL.M. expenses against tax liability anyway.

Finnish tax code exempts scholarships from taxes, but only up to 18, 000 U.S.$/year. I you get more than that, you have pay regular income tax, which is, as Gar33 wrote, pretty heavy. So, if Pat Barnes hears me, I need more money!

I think we should stop a moment here and think of how the tax administration would operate. I´m betting that the only way that the tax administration at your country could know about your scholarship is by checking your bank accounts and finding the deposits. Most scholarships pay the school directly for tuition and they only give YOU the money to cover your expenses, I guess they deposit the money at a bank account in your name. This is the money that you should declare as being received from the scholarship. Is there a scholarship that gives more than 18.000$ for living expenses? With 18.000$ I think you can live pretty good in NYU for the 10 months of your stay. This is viable only if the institutions that give the scholarship don´t have an obligation to submit that kind of information to the tax authorities.

How do you all plan to fund your US LLM's?

Unless I get a pretty BIG scholarship, I won't be going - anyone else in the same boat?

From my mom's pocket.

from my own pocket